I feel like I have been released from prison...

 Since May, May, the lovely month of May when I finished my book for Readict, I've had chronic and persistent writer's block.  Here's the pedal to the metal, nose to the grindstone, etc. that burned me out for awhile. I'd forgotten what it feels like to shut and lock the door to the world because you were working on a deadline.  Royal Secrets is now available, and doing well, on Readict though, by George. This contemporary royalty romance is about a handsome prince falling in love with a commoner only to have his government throw the stops on it because she had a shady past.

So, today I found an old short story I had begun years ago lurking in the musty recesses of my computer.  I had a good start, but no idea where it was going. The title is "angels unawares". I began writing at 7:30 AM.  At noon, I wrote the last line and added it to an anthology of short stories/novellas I've called By Moonlight, and promptly sent it winging its way to Wordwooze, a publisher recommended by a friend.  Will they bite?  There's one ghost story, one witch/famiiar story, three angel stories, and one alien crept in for a short visit.  "angels  unawares" ended at 31 pages and 9400 words.  Here is a bit of the new story:

angels unawares

"Angels in my garden.  Bats in my belfry," Lark mumbled as she examined the green bottle of of rum.  "Got to stop drinking this rot-gut.  I'm starting to see things."

She grimaced through splayed fingers at her tangled brown hair and sad brown eyes.  Her reflection in the sliding door drew her attention from the man huddled in her backyard.  Backyard!  A grandiose four-by-five square.  "Low-income housing, Cajun-style," she mocked her slender face in the glass.  "You've come a long way, baby.  At least it's not far to the bottom."

What she thought she saw sitting in the tall grass couldn't be there.  A naked man, arms hugging his knees, head bent, long mahogany hair obscuring his face.  Strange but possible.  The snowy wings arched above his head was the kicker.  Way beyond bizarre and im-frickin--possible

She fled the delusion lurking in the glass, carving a new path to the center of her living room.  Arms arched above her head, like the childhood ballerina she’d once been, she rotated on her toe.   "Empty bed.  Empty life.  Empty bottle!"  With a laugh and a flick of her wrist, she consigned the dead soldier to sparkles of green on the fake marble floor in the kitchen.  "Good toss.”

She chanced a glance at the glass door.  Indigo dusk was winning its war with a rose-and-gold sunset, but if she narrowed her eyes, she could see her visitor under the sole oak in her garden.  The angel looked like he was crying.  As she watched, he stretched his wings skyward before he folded them about him like a giant snowbird.

“Well crap.  If I’m dreaming, might as well know sooner than later.”  Lark gave the reluctant lock several brutal jerks before the door clattered open.

Staggering toward Big Bird, she cursed the wet grass that soaked the hem of her skirt, but he took no notice of her approach. Wrapped in his wings, he neither moved nor spoke.

“Hey, you, what are you doing here?  I know you’re not an angel.  I don’t believe in angels, and if I did, it’s highly unlikely that an angel is going to pick my backyard for a skin show.”

She sipped the watered-down rum, staring at the iridescent texture of the majestic arched wings, battling the urge to touch them to see if they were made of real feathers.  “Oh damn, I'm drunk."

A lyrical voice answered, "Quite."

"Quiet!  You've got the nerve telling me to be quiet in my own backyard."  Lark listened and decided she hadn't slurred. “You’re some nut dressed up for Halloween early. Hate to break it to you, but it’s only July.” Then she ran out of words.

He laughed, and Lark watched spellbound as the wings unfurled like an alabaster flower opening to cricket-song, but no crickets sang in the rain whispering down from a clear sky. It had been raining for the last two weeks, but it was two months since Tommy left a note pinned to the refrigerator and an empty bank account.

"Quite drunk," he said as he flexed his wings above his head in a white arbor.

Mist jeweled the luminescent feathers.

And he was gloriously, unabashedly, totally naked. From his broad shoulders to his muscled chest down the thin line of dark hair to his navel...--angels weren’t supposed to have male equipment, but this one did--and how! 

As you can see, in my mythos, my angels are not androgynous.  Otherwise, how could you explain the fall of the Grigori, those angels who took wives from among human women.  Each writer builds her own angel world with its different rules.  Likewise, in mine the angelic host are strictly male. I've read other angel books where there are female angels.  It's always interesting to me to read another author's take on angels.  Another thing, in my stories, when people die, they do not become angels. Angels and humans are totally separate creations. When I was writing Gylded Wings, I spent an interesting evening with a Jewish  scholar of the Hebrew Bible.  Some of that found its way into my angel world. Most of it is pure imagination, as you can  well imagine.

May your angels always be with you...

Linda